As she tried to get up, unseen hands grabbed at her clothing and brought her down again. Another body landed on hers, and all the air went out of her lungs. Gasping now, to get fresh breath, she squealed as the punching and kicking started: first her legs, then her arms, and panic consumed her. She knew that if she were to survive, they wouldn’t want to leave marks, so this was more than a final warning.
Without conscious thought, she identified the boots as steel-capped and, as if detached from her physical being, was aware of bones cracking and snapping from the kicks. Then they moved on to her back and kidneys. Ribs gave way as one of them jumped on her body.
She had heard of beatings like this before, and the recipients didn’t live happily ever after – they just didn’t live.
Her hair was torn from her head as they moved further up, and she screamed as loud as she could, but no one would hear her out here. She should never have come here.
A kick that connected with an ear left her head ringing, and then one hit her in the temple and, slowly, the light and sound faded until there was nothing. The dark forms around her, excited by their bloodlust, melted away into the surrounding darkness, heading back whence they had come for a good dose of alcohol. Her body would be found, once it had been tidied away, but she had nothing on her to identify her.
As far as the world was concerned, she didn’t exist, and in today’s society, in this country, it would be assumed that she had been beaten up by a boyfriend and left for dead. That’s the way the English people thought of foreigners – half-savage, and with no control.
And this is what these girls wanted to come to? This kind of life? They were protecting them, really, and saving them from a decadent society that was slowly disintegrating. And she had been only a woman. What worth was a woman, unless she earned you money? Sons, you could get from respectable wives. Daughters had no value, except for breeding from, to carry on the family line.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Olivia arrived home to find that her children were both in, but were sitting looking stunned. ‘What’s wrong?’ she asked.
‘It’s Dad,’ said Ben.
‘He looked like the end of the world had arrived when we got back, then he just got up and said he was going to the church to pray,’ added Hibbie. ‘Whatever’s wrong with him?’
‘Did he say anything about having bad news from his folks?’ asked Olivia, her first thought being that something had happened to Ben’s parents far away in the Caribbean.
‘No, but he did say he needed to talk to you, as he left,’ supplied Ben.
Olivia was rattled. Hal hadn’t been himself for a while now, and she worried that perhaps going back to teaching, whatever he said about it, had worn him down. Kids at school behaved worse and worse as time went on, and he’d had quite a long break from it. This is what she chose to think, because anything else would be completely insupportable, and maybe, unbearable.
Grabbing a bottle of wine and a corkscrew, she sat at the kitchen table. Drinking wouldn’t make this go away, but it would sure take the edge off it. The kids sensibly went to their rooms, and Olivia sat and brooded. The kids would have to get themselves something to eat tonight if they wanted it. She had felt a distance grow between her and Hal since he had gone back to work, and his supply teaching had turned into full-time.
He had always been a set of shoulders to cry on when needs be, and to listen to her blow off steam about her colleagues and the stupidity of the system, when she felt moved to. Now, he just didn’t seem to be there, and was often physically missing from their home. What had happened to their relationship?
When the bottle was nearly empty and the clock showed nine thirty, the front door opened timidly, and Hal shuffled in looking utterly bereft. Olivia rose from her chair and ran over to him, flinging her arms around him and burying her head in his shoulder. ‘Whatever’s the matter? What’s happened?’ Without giving him time to answer she continued, ‘It doesn’t matter what it is, we can get through it together. We’re a team; a good, strong one.’
‘No, we can’t get through this,’ Hal almost whispered, his breath tickling her ear.
‘Tell me, Hal. Whatever it is, I can help.’
‘No, you can’t,’ he sighed.
‘There’s nothing bad enough for us not to find a way out of it or round it. Tell me, Hal, before I go mad. I’ve known there was something wrong for some time.’
‘This is so bad I don’t think you will ever be able to look at me again.’
‘Come on Hal, baby, what’s eating you? How can we fight it if you don’t even tell me what it is?’
Hal pulled away from her and stood a foot or so away, his face a blank, his body language full of guilt. ‘Olivia,’ he finally said quietly, ‘I have sinned. I have betrayed you.’
‘How?’ Whatever was Hal talking about?
‘I have confessed to the pastor and talked it over with him, and he said that the only thing I could do was to confess to you and pray that you could find it in your heart to forgive me.’
All of a sudden, Olivia felt a chill run down her spine and felt goose bumps break out all over her body. ‘Tell me, Hal,’ she barked, her voice harsh with foreboding. Surely he wasn’t going to say what she thought she knew was coming? Her muscles clenched, ready for denial or flight.
‘Liv, I’ve been unfaithful to you.’ Almost as a reflex reaction, her right hand shot out and gave him a resounding slap across the face. There. It was said. It was all out in the open, and Olivia had neither the breath to scream in denial or the strength to run away. Her whole body began to shake, and she collapsed slowly on to the sofa like a deflating concertina with all the air squeezed out of it, neither crying nor apologising for hitting him; something that had never happened before.
Hal immediately threw himself down next to her and put his arms round her. ‘I’m so sorry, my darlin’ little flower. I’ve been so stupid. Please say you’ll hear me out and at least consider forgiving me.’
Olivia’s body suddenly stiffened in his embrace and she grated, ‘Get out! Get out of my home. I don’t want to set eyes on you, you filthy cheat.’
‘Liv, give me a chance to explain.’
‘I don’t want to hear the details of your dirty little secret. Get out now. Go to her if you want, but get out of my sight.’
Hal moved slightly away, tears pouring down his cheeks. ‘But I don’t want to go to her. It was a stupid mistake. It’s you I love, and I don’t know how I could have been so mad.’
‘You’re like all men – easy enough to reel in, if hooked by the dick.’
‘Liv, give me a chance to explain.’
‘No way, José. I want you out of here.’
‘Liv, don’t let the price for this one silly mistake be my family. I’ll sleep on the sofa; I’ll do anything you want, if you’ll just give me another chance.’
Olivia was sobbing now. ‘How could you, Hal, after all the years we’ve been together? And with work in such a difficult phase?’ She said the last phrase without thinking, and Hal immediately became like stone.
‘And that’s just it, isn’t it? For the last I don’t know how long, you’ve got back from work and taken it for granted that I will have cooked a meal for the family, and then just rambled on and on about what a hard day you’ve had; about how difficult and all-consuming the job is, and how put-upon you are. You never ask me how my day has been. You never asked how band practice had gone or how a gig went. You never asked me if I’d done anything that I’d like to discuss with you – it was always you, you, you; take, take, take.’
‘Hal!’ She almost screamed his name in her shock and surprise at his reply.
‘It’s true. And then you have that sergeant to stay when she’s having a bad time with her marriage and you just take it for granted that I’m all right with it, and ninety-nine times out of a hundred, I am all right with anything, but sometimes – just sometimes – I would like you to consider me first, instead of slightly below Hibbie�
��s cat.
‘Did you not feel that something was going wrong when Ben had his crisis and Hibbie ran away? Did it not cross your mind that you might’ve had your eye off the family ball, and if you didn’t dribble it back into play soon, it would go over the sideline and be lost? Well, I’ve been sidelined, and the kids, too. Olivia, you’ve become a stranger to us all, not the loving wife and mother that you used to be and, as far as I’m concerned, it’s that bloody job that you seem to care about most.’
After this impassioned speech there was an eerie silence as Olivia began to absorb what Hal had said, and had to acknowledge that there was a grain of truth in it. She had taken it for granted that Hal would always cope when she was elsewhere on a case: she did take for granted the fact that the kids weren’t disobedient or rebellious. And she hadn’t learnt her lesson the year before when they’d had their own family troubles: and even that didn’t alert her to the fact that she just expected Hal always to be there as a human backstop and all-round rock.
They stood looking at each other in desolate silence, their faces wet with tears, as they contemplated what was at risk here; what they had nearly lost. And what they might still lose. That both were at fault, there was no question. How to put it right was more complex.
Finally, in a hushed tone, Hal said, ‘We’ll talk? And I’ll give up this stupid supply work? It’s simply not worth it if it’s going to drive a wedge between us.’
‘Yes,’ replied Olivia, simply, and they fell into each other’s arms, the way a child would with a parent; simply for comfort.
INTERLUDE
Three o’clock on a weekday morning, and not a soul around except for the odd drunk sitting on a bench sleeping off his skinful.
The rusty old van drew up and the engine was killed as the two live occupants sat listening to the comparative silence of the wee small hours. There were also two bodies in the back of the van as well, but these were no longer of this world.
‘Did you give her a good working over with that hammer?’
‘Face, and hands. Even her own mother wouldn’t recognise her now.’
‘I done what I was asked wiv the bloke.’
‘Shall we get on wiv this fancy art installation, then?’ asked the big man, smiling to reveal a row of broken and uneven nicotine-stained teeth.
‘Look, I’m Tracey Emin, me,’ replied the other – the one with only half an ear on the right side of his head. ‘If we just act like we’ve got a couple of pissed mates, no one’s gonna take any notice of what we’re up to – just anuvver coupla drunks helpin’ their friends into a van.’
A slight, but brilliantly acted, uncertainty of step giving veracity to their inebriated condition to anyone who saw them, they opened the back doors of the van and took out the body of the man, which they then inserted into the cab from the passenger side, but head first, so that his top half was against the driver’s door and would flop out when this was next opened.
Almost with reverence, the one with the disfigured ear took some items out of a pocket, neatly wrapped in an old-fashioned handkerchief, and laid them, like a sacrificial offering, on the man’s chest.
As he laid them down, he recited, ‘Nose first. Then ears, two. And lastly, tongue.’
‘That’s real artistic, that is,’ commented Broken-Teeth, almost in awe.
‘Not bad, is it? ’Er, now?’
‘’Er, now. My turn to show off,’ leered Broken-Teeth, moving back to the rear of the van, as his partner in crime shut the passenger door on their grisly, unofficial Turner Prize offering.
The woman’s body had been thrown about a bit by the drive here, but nothing would show after what Broken-Teeth had done to her already badly beaten body. ‘’Elp me pull ’er rahnd so that ’er ’ead’s right up to the doors. It’ll ’ave more impact – artistically, like. That’s it, now ’er ’ands folded decoratively under ’er chin, like she’s been laid out proper.
‘Jaysus, ’er face’s just a mush, and ’er ’ands look like they’ve been through some sort of industrial mangle. It looks like you ’ad fun.’
‘Oh, I did, me old mate; I did, that. And you ain’t the only bastard who can sign his work artistically.’ Broken-Teeth put a hand into his old donkey jacket pocket and pulled out a slightly wilted summer flower. ‘Seems sorta fitting, like, don’t yer fink?’
‘Yer no bleedin’ Damien Hirst, but it’s a nice gesture.’
‘Right, let’s get the door shut on this stiff and then scarper.’
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The inspector arrived in the office very early the next morning, having found it very difficult to settle in the cottage after the events of the evening before and, simply because she was cognisant of the fact that she was partly to blame for this latest family calamity, had an awful lot of built-up spleen that she needed to vent on somebody.
She had decided that she would visit the travellers’ camp, and may God have mercy on their souls if they weren’t co-operative and forthcoming with the information she was after. She had only had time to put the kybosh on Westbrook and O’Brian’s visit and skim through the reports she had read the day before, when the door opened and she turned, absolutely flabbergasted to see Lauren approaching her desk.
The sergeant gave a wan smile and said, ‘I couldn’t stand it at home with all that silence during the day, so I got the kids off early to school and decided to come in here just to keep my mind off dwelling on everything that’s been happening.’ If she’d been really honest, she would have confessed that she also wanted to see Daz again in the flesh, even if it was dressed.
Olivia smiled at her and said, ‘Don’t get settled. I’m just on my way to put the wind up a bunch of travellers about that newborn’s body dumped in the car park, so you can come with me for added support, if you like. All contributions welcome.’
‘Wilco, boss.’ Lauren smiled back, any animosity that had existed between them now dissipated by greater events. ‘Why are we going so early?’
‘To catch them unawares, of course.’ As far as Olivia was concerned, what the situation lacked without an Irishman, was more than made up for by the presence of a very tetchy woman with a companion who would agree with anything she said if given the nod.
‘Are you sure you’re up for this?’ asked Olivia, as they drove out to the encampment.
‘I woke up this morning feeling very positive about the future,’ replied Lauren, her face serious. ‘As far as my late husband’s concerned, I think what has happened has saved me from a very acrimonious divorce and custody battle, and for that, I’m grateful. I also don’t have to go through the unpleasantness of fighting for a decent maintenance payment, I’m still, officially, at least, Kenneth’s wife, so all the insurance money will secure me, and my children’s, future. It all seems rather too good to be true, if you get my drift.’
‘I believe I do,’ came a rather wobbly reply, and Lauren turned to see that Olivia’s eyes were awash with unshed tears, her bottom lip, trembling.
‘Are you sure you are? What’s up, boss?’
‘Nothing I can possibly share at the moment. Leave it for now. I’ve got a lot of thinking to do, but I’m glad to hear that you’re feeling so positive.’
The spokesperson elected by the travellers. after a bit of to-ing and fro-ing, turned out to be a Mr O’Reilly, and for a split second, Olivia doubted her decision to take over this task instead of handing it to Teddy O’Brien and Westbrook, but she put on her fiercest expression and set forth on extracting as much information, and maybe even truth, as possible.
‘We’re here for any info you may have concerning the body of a newborn baby dumped in the car park at the police station. We know it was newborn because there was still the presence of vernix on it. We also know it wasn’t a Caucasian baby, but we need to know who left it there for us to find and we need to establish whether we’re looking at a stillbirth or a murder. I favour the latter, as its neck was broken.
‘A car was caught on CCTV in the stati
on car park and we’re following up on that sighting. Now, what have you got to say for your community?’
‘Sure and we know nothing about any babby, madam,’ stated Mr O’Reilly with a disarming and toothless smile.
‘Well, we have information that you do know something about it. We know it was found on the tip, and that your community has been scavenging there before first light, to see if there’s anything to be picked up that will make you a bob or two. Did you know that you needed a council licence to take items from the tip?’
‘Now, I don’t see as how you can have any proof of anything of the sort,’ he replied with another gummy leer.
Olivia quickly crossed her fingers behind her back and asked, ‘Did you know about the new security cameras that have been installed there? They catch evidence of any illegal removal of property that, by law, belongs to the local authority. And would you like me to identify those persons and prosecute for having no licence?’
She knew she was talking bullshit, but if they were only there just before dawn, they would not have had sufficient light to see if anything was filming them from the ramshackle building that served as an administration hut at the tip.
Lauren suddenly took centre stage, removing the pressure from Olivia and asked, ‘If we’re willing to overlook the CCTV footage, would you be willing to make a statement about what you know of this tiny murder victim – assuming it wasn’t one of you who committed the dreadful deed. I’d hate to have to take you all in for questioning on either of these matters.’
There was a muttering of resentment and the travellers who had been standing in a close-knit group suddenly went into a huddle, excluding the two women from their discussion. Mr O’Reilly then came to the front of the group again and said, ‘Firstly, that babby wasn’t one of ours – I want to get that clear from the very beginning. And we’ve decided that you couldn’t have got anything from the car park, because we made sure to obscure the numberplate, but if you’d be willing to overlook the footage shot at the tip we’d co-operate.
Tightrope Page 18